The 'process note’ pieces were originally solicited
by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry
collections for various workshops and classes. This process note and poems by
Jan Conn are part of her curriculum for Maker, Mentor, Muse and poetry classes at
the University of San Francisco, Dominican University, and Saint Mary’s College
of California. Thank you for reading.
“AUTUMN ELBOWS
THE WINDOWS/LEAVING A RUSSET SMUDGE”
Autumn in a
rural setting in western Massachusetts is visually stunning and suffused with
the sadness of a season pitching downhill toward winter. Not quite
transitional, but preparing for a colder, darker, quieter time. Working from
home rather than in my biology laboratory and office in Albany, NY, I had more
time in the presence of woods, fields, family, and gardens. Michael Dickman’s spare,
dynamic, propulsive-yet-allusive “Lakes Rivers Streams” in Days & Days
(2019) adroitly captures the ebb and flow of contemporary living, and this combined
with my work on Japanese-inspired haiku and renga as one of Yoko’s Dogs,
allowed me to focus more deeply and intuitively on my immediate exterior and
interior landscapes.
The result was
several long poems—fragmentary and ecstatic—written in a sort of frenzied rush
the summer before the manuscript was due in the fall of 2023. What propelled
them, exactly, remains a mystery, but a trip to France in 2022 that centered on
the Lascaux caves, combined with a sudden flourishing of myself as a visual
artist may have propelled the poem “Lascaux”, and a longer-than-expected stay
in a tiny Peruvian Amazon village for mosquito research provided tangential perspective
on aspects of my childhood in southeastern Quebec and gave me a small window
into the Peruvian families we lived among (“A Roller Coaster, A Hit, A
Pint-Sized Devil Machine, Some Dark Chocolate”). My long-term links to Mexico through
many visits (starting alone, age 25) influenced “After-Image”. As for “Part
Star, Part Venom, Part Bone, Part Microplastic” I can only say that meditation
on the current human condition may have prompted parts of this. “Early
November” and the final poem, “Late Summer”, were written back-to-back, finally
allowing me to sense the profound connection to the Mohican land where I live, and
together with those mentioned above, form the backbone of Peony Vertigo.
Early November
-excerpt
+++
A late firefly flashes in
the ironwood, the motherboard takes a coffee break
Wind picking up, track lights humming, here comes the
solstice
Right when there’s an
overload of wasp nests in the canopy
A party of voles
celebrating their discovery of Tulipa and Crocus
Galanthus and Allium bulbs
After a slight hitch in the space-time continuum
An effervescence between
the indoor palm
and the red-chili-pepper lights
The afternoon reappears
in a tube of cadmium yellow
Accompanying hillside
hums continuously where it meets the skyline
Borders
of evergreens and flickering shadows
To whom shall I reveal my horoscope?
What are my options now
that permafrost is not a thing?
Are
there more decades to be found?
To whom shall I address
my questions?
The poems in Peony
Vertigo are image-driven; many are lyrical and associative, and others use
a narrative framework to convey memories and dream sequences. Poems in earlier
books (e.g., Tomorrow’s Bright White Light, Tightrope Books, 2016; Edge
Effects, Brick Books, 2012) have been rooted in anxiety about
eco-environmental damage and climate change, but in Peony Vertigo there
was, in addition, the felt urgency of a major socio-political crisis, perceived
through the stuttering, soul-eating lens of a global pandemic and a long term
opioid epidemic.
As I biologist
I have always been connected to both the non-human and human worlds, and I have
a particular fondness for amphibians (my spirit animal is a frog), whose
absorbent skin and complex life cycle make them vulnerable to ecological disturbance
and pollution in water sources.
Depth Model of the Self as Eft
An eft, incandescent orange with darker
orange spots,
indescribably itself, crawls across the
forest path
toward the sheltering leaves and flowers of a
woodland violet.
It enters the Camino del Sueño—or is this me,
a member
of the species that has carelessly
contributed to the near-extinction
of newts and their erstwhile friends and
relatives
long before a marvellous and monstrous black
donut hole
re-envelops the foreseeable and beyond.
Among the violets I find moisture and shade¾
there is iNaturalist and my photo now added
to the cloud,
distribution of myself and kin where once
there
were pristine water bodies and native
insects. As my CNS
is now deranged, incapable of envisioning the
self
as adult newt with the attendant
responsibilities of
aquatic mating, offspring production and the
like,
I note in my journal we need to create a pool
immediately
because after leaving the shelter of the
violets
we are bound to seek the aquatic over the
terrestrial
as our life cycle requires, and no newt on
earth
can survive without its divine pool, vernal
or otherwise,
preferably surrounded by beech, maples, oaks,
and ash, unless you deem essential the
addition
of certain microscopic organisms, dear
amphibious spirit,
with which to succor your acolytes—
+++
Our Camino del Sueño is now a tectonic fault.
As we awaken
in the west having fallen asleep in the east,
continental drift
is triggered. Before the delicate instruments
invented to measure
such large-scale motion, we were the ones who
most longed for
a pathway to the water. Now with the
shimmering moon
heretofore thought to be solely a Hollywood
invention
beneath which untold numbers of persons, and
my friend,
are calmly shooting their bodies full of
fentanyl
and other horrific substances, I awake a
full-bodied
if slightly careworn human without substance
or solution,
aghast, overlooking a vast corrupted inland
sea,
nowhere on earth to lay my or my beloved
friend’s heads.
UNEXPECTEDLY
One striking motif across Peony
Vertigo I would never have imagined myself incorporating is floral. The
appearance of various species (goldenrod, iris, violet, morning glory,
dandelion, devil’s paintbrush, and, of course, peonies, among other species) throughout
gave me pause. Why flowers? Many responses are possible – symbolism, beauty,
seasonality, visual art, texture, color, scent, uniqueness – perhaps all of
these in differing proportions influenced me. Also, travel – my biological
research takes me frequently to landscapes, both anthropogenic and wild, in Central
and South America, to conduct fieldwork. I always seek botanical gardens, wild
places, and unusual environments that might harbor odd or surprising plants – their
very ephemeral nature draws me in.
Marriage to an evolutionary
biologist who researches plants and is an avid gardener, is undoubtedly another
factor. And yet – peonies – I had forgotten that my mother loved to garden, and
in a different section of “Late November” I incorporated a dream sequence of
her “kneeling in the garden, shears/in hand, delirious pink of peonies”. I’ve
discussed the importance of this poem in Peony Vertigo in an interview -
“A Peony to Pique the
Senses: Chloe Hogan-Weihmann in Conversation with Jan Conn” in the literary
journal The Malahat Review, see
https://www.malahatreview.ca/interviews/conn_interview2.html
Peony
There is too much orange—
the eft I cradle, salmon
on whole wheat,
the sitter’s nail polish
This
morning my brain is programmed
to
unfold its peony
I turn off the house
lights
recite my self-help list
how
the scent disrupts the brand newness
of
mid-May air
petals
in my vesicles, vaulting the synaptic
clefts
So quiet in the house
the sound of a fox
swishing through grass on black toes
is amplified
Sharp snap could be a
twig
but later I discover
a
vole’s velveteen jacket
flung
into the undergrowth
bright lantern of the
delicate face
snuffed
neurotransmitters
texting
from the peony seeds
Another strong
influence on the continued evolution of my poetry has been incorporation of the
lessons learned (constraints new to me) in composing renga (linked haiku) with
the three other members of Yoko’s Dogs: Mary Di Michele, Susan Gillis, and Jane
Munro. Most fundamental to me have been 1) economy of language; 2) unpredictability;
3) seasonality; and 4) attunement to and incorporation of all five senses.
Metaphor and simile are not generally part of a haiku/renga tradition. Another
fascinating aspect is the non-narrative linking between verses in renga that
form a zigzag of associations.
In ordering
poems in sections of a manuscript, I frequently use this form of connectedness for
its flexibility. A link can be subtle or direct, an image, an inferred seasonal
object, a shape, a scent, a sound, time, touch or cadence. It’s intense and
challenging. It can provide a distinctive subterranean context for individual
sections or a complete manuscript. As an example, the poem immediately
following “Peony” above, is “The Archive of Liminal Rhetorical Thought”, seen
below. There are, to me, two primary links (lines) that connect these poems and
happen to occur at the end of “The Archive…”: I disappear into graffiti,
outside chronology. and Moving like the force that opens morning
glories. The initial line above, in italics, refers (I think) to the
narrator in “Peony” who experiences too much orange and recites a self-help
list—this narrator might be inclined to disappear to a
place, situation or emotional space outside chronology. In the italicized second
line, I associate both the force and the morning glories with neurotransmitters
and the peony.
The Archive of Liminal Rhetorical Thought
My clothes are
compilations of vinyl records. Many are 78’s; several
still spin.
Underexploited, the
metaphysics of garments: an occasion for weeping.
Among petals of clouds,
tapioca, hospital sheets, I cannot locate my commodities.
At intervals there is a
tenderness in my condition.
Which is more like a
chandelier, a dog or a daydream?
Every banality has an
edge; concrete is both brutal and serene.
An urban planner dictates
gravel here, sidewalk there, and the voluptuous shade of a downtown tree
vanishes.
With it, the former sky.
The sky does not perceive its formerness. It beats the sidewalk blue. Clouds
imagine their future as water drops.
I disappear into
graffiti, outside chronology.
Moving like the force
that opens morning glories.
As an aside, I
used to sew many of my own clothes until I began graduate school in Vancouver,
British Columbia, after which, aside from science, there was only time for
poetry, which was portable (a lined notebook, a mechanical pencil, and a few
books of poems to get started), and could be undertaken in small bouts of time on
buses, airplanes, trains. And a confession: I have never taken a creative
writing class and I don’t belong to a writing group (with the exception of
Yoko’s Dogs). I find my support in individual poets and visual artist friends, family,
and I read.
TRANSFORMATION(S)
In addition to
becoming an eft (above), I discovered that my sense of empathy and interest in
other life forms aside from humans readily lends itself to imaginative
transformation, possibly transference. In Peony Vertigo, I become a
prehistoric horse (the poem Lascaux), an eft (Depth Model…), fog
(One Morning in the Life of Fog), a bronze rat (Ai Weiwei’s Rat),
a fish (Autumn Trout), and a snowdrop (First to Flower).
Transformation is magical, complex, and intuitive. Fog itself is a form of
water that I have found, since childhood, to be eerie, delicious, chilly, and
mysterious. I love to walk in its swirls and near-clouds, to be inside its moist
muffledness. So much remains unknown in science: one may find evidence in
support of a hypothesis, but this is never the whole story. One Morning in
the Life of Fog is after Alice Oswald’s “A Rushed Account of the Dew” in Falling
Awake (2016).
One Morning in the Life of Fog
I who have often imagined
myself as an irrational number
I who can disappear by
closing my eyes
I would like to know the
absolute value of anything
in case I am asked
In the curious hour
before daylight breaks open
I walk into a bank of fog
where
I can practice being a decimal point
a
fraction of
I would like to know how
a falling cloud
feels, on descent,
briefly touching down
onto
the back of a swan asleep on a pond
beading
on her feather gown, temporary
suspended
between water and air
oxygen
discarding then calling back its hydrogens
now
lifting away, leaving below feathers, swan, pond
curve
of
blue
METAPHORICAL
Alongside more
elliptical, fragmentary poems, I love to try my hand at metaphor, and am
immersed currently in further exploration of this, under the influences of poets
such as Frank Bidart and Sylvia Plath, to name a few. Such poems are
challenging to me and thus I have only a single one in Peony Vertigo,
called “Ironweed” but I am always drawn to read it when the occasion arises.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it focuses on a plant, a very tall one, that is uncommon
in the Northeast.
Ironweed
There is something in you
of an iron-sided steamship
an architecture of
unpliable stems, toothed
leaves, a crow’s nest of
disk flowers
a pile of deep violet
slippers
uplifted on junkyard
stilts
stiff-kneed, towering
overhead
as though dredged from
some scrap iron seabed
and winched roots-first
into place
overrunning meadows and
pastures
obdurate perennials,
late-summer bloomers
witnesses to nightlong
astonishment
as the Perseids
brilliantine their long hair and flare
and the stars stutter,
waking from a long dream
of falling
A final note,
this process piece would not be complete without mention of the poem “To
Remember What Never Existed: Lament and Lyric for Clarice Lispector”, located
near the middle of Peony Vertigo. Lispector was a brilliant Brazilian
writer who captured my imagination the first time I traveled to Brazil (1987).
After reading and rereading her books and working in Brazil for many years, I
finally found a voice that enabled me to write, in the context of environmental
depredations in Brazil, about her visionary and difficult life, profound love
of Portuguese, and playful surrealism.
Jan Conn, visual artist, poet and biologist, is
the author of ten books of poetry, most recently Peony Vertigo (Brick
Books, 2023), and, as a member of the collaborative writing group, Yoko’s Dogs,
of four books, most recently Lunchbox Poems (Turret House Press, 2025).
Her poetry has been supported by a Canada Council travel grant to Japan and a
senior writing grant to conduct research in Brazil and at Kew Gardens on the
British botanical artist Margaret Mee. Conn has received a Canadian Broadcasting
Company (CBC) Literary Prize, the inaugural P.K. Page Founder’s Award, and was
nominated for the Pat Lowther Award. She has been represented by Lauren Clark
Fine Arts Gallery in Great Barrington MA since 2022. Her visual art has
appeared on the covers of “Planetary health approaches to understand and
control vector-borne diseases”, Vol. 8, Series: Ecology and Control of
Vector-borne Diseases, Wageningen Press, The Netherlands; The Maynard
and Geist, literary journals, and together with a poem, in the UK-based
journal The Prose Poem. She has exhibited paintings in Toronto, New England,
and Cederedge CO. As a biologist, Conn has published >150 scientific
articles, mainly on the vector biology of mosquitoes in Latin America that
transmit the malaria parasite. She grew up in southeastern Quebec and lives in
western Massachusetts. Visit her Instagram: artistatplay001or check out her
paintings here https://laurenclarkfineart.com/collections/jan-conn
Maw Shein Win’s
most recent full-length poetry collection is Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn)
which was shortlisted for the 2025 Northern California Book Award in Poetry.
Her previous full-length collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House
(Omnidawn) was longlisted for the PEN America 2021 Open Book Award, and
shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. She is the inaugural poet
laureate of El Cerrito, CA, the recipient of the 2026 George Garrett Award for
Outstanding Community Service in Literature, 2025 Berkeley Poetry Festival
Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2025 Nomadic/SF Foundation Literary Award
for Non-fiction. She is a member of The Writers Grotto and a co-founder of
Maker, Mentor, Muse. She teaches poetry in the MFA Programs at the University
of San Francisco, Dominican University, and Saint Mary’s College of California.
mawsheinwin.com
